Statement from Julie Vargas, Chairman of the Board and Chief Science Officer: “It is with sorrow that the B. F. Skinner Foundation shares the news that one of its founding members, Dr. Jack Michael, passed away on November 12. Jack, along with Ted Ayllon, was one of the first professionals to apply reinforcement principles to human behavior. Known especially for his work on verbal behavior, Jack leaves a generation of students indebted to his teaching.”
The Foundation would like to share an anecdote about Jack Michaels from Randy Williams, first published in Operants Q4 2017. It describes how highly B. F. Skinner thought of Jack: “At the ABA conference, I attended the 90th birthday of Fred Keller, and Skinner made the metaphor of the two Freds riding in tandem on a bike. A couple years later, Skinner attended Jack’s 50th (I think) birthday at ABA and, in toasting Jack, [Skinner] said he would have to put a third seat on the bike for Jack. I think that was Jack’s all-time favorite compliment.” To access the full content of the article from which this quote came please visit his In Memoriam page.
